|
Improve rural food storage
2008-06-25 09:47:05
By Editor
A traveller heading for Northern Tanzania by road and passing through Tanga Region will notice a lot of fruits that are on sale.
A chance to talk with people living around the area will reveal that farmers are unable to take all their fruits to the market because most of them get rotten due to lack of cold storage facilities.
This problem, which is also experienced in other regions of Morogoro, Rukwa, Tabora, Coast Region, to mention just a few, betrays the virtual non-existence of fruit canning and processing industries, in spite of the huge local and international demand for natural juice.
The same is the case with cereals. The majority of small holder farmers in Tanzania are involved in subsistence agriculture, that is, they basically produce for consumption and a little extra for selling as cash crops.
Our farmers lack the technology on food preservation, although there are pockets around the country where farmers possess indigenous knowledge on food storage.
However, these traditional food preservation methods are not widespread, although they can go a long way to alleviate food shortage which precisely originates from poor storage facilities.
The lack of storage facilities directly contributes to food insecurity in the sense that many peasants, knowing fully well that their food is going to be wasted within a few months, choose to set aside only a small portion for home consumption then sell the rest to middlemen who rummage through the countryside combing for any cereals available for sale, and purchasing them at throw away prices.
This explains why a certain location can have a bumper harvest this year, but is hit by famine in the following year.
At times, poor harvests linked to uneven rainfall might spell a catastrophe for people who had registered record harvests in the previous year.
Time has come for the issue of food preservation to be addressed in a comprehensive manner; otherwise Africa will go on marking time, regardless of increased food production within any particular period.
Ways have to be found to make food storage sheds or containers a familiar sight in any rural area, and this is only possible if government authorities realize that this problem requires urgent attention.
In 2002, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo said African governments needed to pay more attention to storage as a means of curbing food shortages.
He said much of Africa`s annual harvests was lost as a result of inefficient storage, including half of its fruits and vegetables, one-fifth of its grains and a quarter of its tubers.
What General Obasanjo said then remains true today, whereby millions of Africans face food shortages.
That this problem persists at a time when over 40 years of independence have passed is shameful, and we should not blame it on resources, but on half-heartedness, half-cooked methods of doing things, and a shocking lack of priorities.
That this continent has become a net food exporter ridicules our independence, because we have a lot of arable land and all that is needed is to utilize it accordingly and preserve the harvests properly.
|
